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Mint 14 64bit Xfce AMD 64 dual core , but it also accured with Mint 13 32bit. Last night shut down the computer, but it wouldn't go off for a while, a notification come up for a momment and I wasn't able to read it before it then shut down. Turn the computer on today and everything looks good except none of the applications have the minimize, maximize and close buttons up in right hand corner; the right mouse button doesn't work, none of Firefox's File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks, Tools work. The only way to shut it down is by the task manager. Also, the last program open always stays on top even if I click on another previously opened application. All other programs have similar bugs now as well. This happened about a week ago with Mint 13 32bit Xfce and I figured I'd just update to Mint 14 64bit and reinstall. Everything fine for several days then it happened again. I believe this also happened about a year ago with Mint 12 / Gnome. I am not a Linux pro. I rarely use command line.

So I have 3 questions:

1: What happened? 2: How do I fix it?3: How do I prevent this from happening again?

passerby wrote:Could you post a screenshot of the issue? It sounds a little like your window manager won't start, but I can't say from the description alone.

Hello passerby and anandrkris;

Except for the lack of the minimize, maximize and close buttons at the top corner of programs everything looks the same, so a screenshot doesn't show anything different. I tried reinstalling anything that I could find that was Windows Managment in the Synaptic Package Manager, but nothing changed.

Both of you (passerby and anandrkris) mentioned a problem with the Window Manager. How would I fix it if it was?

deep64blue wrote:This seems to be a well known issue with XFCE which I have encountered many times but the various fixes on the Internet just don't work. I've given up and switched to Cinnamon instead.

Well, this is the third time its happened over about a year and half and several editions of Mint. It's too bad, because I really like Xfce. I guess I'll have to look into the other DE's if nobody comes up with a fix. Gnome 3 is what turned me on to Xfce, so that is out.

After some searching I was able to get my default toolbar back through terminal and then I found this post to get the Minimize, Maximize and Close buttons working again but when I did ... I received the following error.